Thoughtful essays on the Civil War by one of its foremost
contemporary students. Princeton historian McPherson (Abraham
Lincoln and the Second American Revolution, 1990, etc.) takes a
synoptic view of the Civil War and its lessons. He traces, for
instance, the growth of the concept of "total war," involving
civilians and combatants alike, in the border-state guerrilla
operations that preceded the main war, when abolitionist and
slaveholder bands seemingly vied with each other to inflict the
greatest number of atrocities on innocents. He also charts the
evolution of the war from a conflict meant, on the federal side, to
restore the old Union into a war of republican virtues meant to
impress the cause of industrial democracy upon an agrarian
civilization. In discussing this change of purpose, he examines the
notion of "Southern exceptionalism" advanced by many other students
of the war, arguing that in many cases the commonalities between
South and North outweighed their regional differences, save that
"the North - along with a few countries in northwestern Europe -
hurtled forward eagerly toward a future of industrial capitalism
that many Southerners found distasteful if not frightening."
Occasionally, in an effort to make the Civil War meaningful to
modern readers, the historian makes anachronistic stretches:
"George Orwell need not have created the fictional world of 1984 to
describe Newspeak. He could have found it in the South Carolina of
1861." Still, McPherson is successful in explaining why popular
interest in the Civil War endures, and indeed why it should endure.
Fine historical writing, and required reading for both Civil War
buffs and scholars - divided audiences, as McPherson notes. (Kirkus
Reviews)
In Drawn With the Sword, James W. McPherson offers a series of thoughtful and engaging essays on some of the most enduring questions of the Civil War. Each essay in Draw With the Sword reveals McPherson's own profound knowledge of the Civil War and of the controversies among historians, presenting all sides in clear and lucid prose.
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